Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of Emily Dickinson is the message which her poems convey. Dickinson is an artist with words: she has the capability to display her philosophy using metaphors and allusions throughout her poems. Despite never marrying, Dickinson held strong views about marriage. She saw marriage as a barrier, that marriage often ended parts of womanhood for the bride. Never the less, it is best to analyze Dickinson’s poem about marriage and love through a feminist perspective to best understand her philosophy about marriage.
In the poem “I Gave Myself To Him,” Dickinson begins with:
I gave myself to him,
And took himself for pay.
The solemn contract of a life
Was ratified this way. (1-4)
The opening stanza gives
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The poem is written from a young girl's point of view, who is transitioning from girlhood to adulthood by marriage. The speaker put the words “wife” (1) and “woman” (3) in quotes, most likely to indicate that she has little clue about their actual meaning. The speaker, however, did not put the word Czar in quotes, but she is comparing being Czar to being a woman. A Czar is defined as a person appointed to govern a certain subject, the speaker could be making a metaphor about being a woman and a wife in a marriage is like being a Czar: there are aspects of life which she needs to govern alongside with her husband. When the speaker writes “I've finished that – / That other state” (1-2), the other state referred could be girlhood, and thus it can be interpreted that the speaker believes that her girlhood ended simply by marriage. In the next stanza, the speaker makes a metaphor referring marriage to an eclipse, the speaker writes: "How odd the Girl's life looks / Behind this soft Eclipse!" (5-6). The cryptic reference to an eclipse could be deciphered as Emily …show more content…
The speaker also refers herself to be “Empress of Calvary” (6), Calvary in this context is a location -as evident by the capitalization of the word- the location which Jesus Christ was crucified. By referring to herself as "Empress of Calvary" (6), the speaker sees the religious aspect of marriage, but instead of the good aspect of religion, she feels as if her marriage is holy, but she is suffering as well. Later in the poem, the speaker